Review of 天鹰学院 (Tiānyīng xuéyuàn)

[Skunq]

I mentioned I had studied Chinese at this school in another thread, so roddy asked me to write a review.

 

The school is placed in 五道口 (Wǔdàokǒu) on the main road 成府路 (Chéngfǔ lù) in the same building as the McDonald's close to the subway station and is on 8th floor. There is also another Chinese school in that same building called Global Village.

 

I studied at Tiānyīng from October 2013 to February 2014 and was quite satisfied. I went for the cheapest package which just gave me one 口语 (spoken language) class (1.5 hour) every day from Monday to Friday. I cannot remember the exact figures, but I think I paid about 4500 RMB for 6 months including the study visa, which is about 500 RMB and takes roughly three weeks to process. If paying for a full year it would have been around 8000 RMB. You can of course go for a bigger package with two classes each day or pay for extra HSK classes and so on. I, however, prefer to spend less time in the classroom and more time self-studying or practicing with Chinese friends. Having just 1.5 hour each day worked perfectly for me as it allowed me to practice my 口语 a bit every day, then go home to continue practice reading and writing, listening and studying grammar (using the New Practical Chinese Reader books).

 

If you are a serious student then you will most likely get ahead of your classmates quite fast. It seemed to me that most of the students there were also studying at one of the universities nearby or working, so there were not many full-time Chinese students like me. Consequently, there wasn't much opportunity for sparring with my classmates, and it would mostly be them learning from me when I came up with new vocabulary or sentence structures that I had learned out-of-class. This wasn't such a big problem though as most of the talking would be short conversations between the teacher and one student at a time.

 

Fortunately for me, as most students were also busy studying other places or working, many would often skip class or perhaps take the evening class instead. As a result, I would occasionally have 1-on-1 lessons and often we were just two students. At most we would be five students, but that rarely happened. I liked this, as fewer classmates meant more time for me to talk and practice my Chinese. 

 

A good thing about this school is that the schedule is very flexible. If I did not have time in the morning, then I could just come in the afternoon or evening. Although it would not be the exact same lesson, the level would be about the same. Also, if you wanted to switch to a class on a higher or lower level, then that was not a problem either. 

 

My teacher was a young woman in her mid-twenties, I would guess. She was nice and had a good sense of humor. Her teaching was quite good, although more variation would have been nice. Unfortunately, many Chinese teachers are very uniform in their way of teaching. From my experience, most Chinese teachers find a set of teaching methods that seem to work for them and just stick with that. The problem is that in the long run the classes become very predictable and rather dull for the students. In my case, where I only had one class every day it wasn’t such a big issue. I was happy to just get to practice my spoken Chinese every day and utilize what I had learned out-of-class.

 

On a side note, the woman at the reception desk (it was mostly the same person there) who helps with visas and other formalities doesn't speak any English at all, but some of the teachers know some English and can help you translate if needed.

[mikeedward]

Thanks for the review. I was at their office today. Seems their classes have moved to 矿业大学 (just north of BLCU). Haven't signed up yet..